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Monday, January 9, 2017

More than half of Americans, or 58 percent, say repealing the Affordable Care Act is important to health care reform, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Americans were asked what components of health care reform should be top priorities for President-elect Donald Trump and Congress. When asked about repealing Obamacare, 37 percent said it was a top priority and 21 percent said it was important for lawmakers to accomplish. Only 31 percent said repeal should not happen.

Of those Americans who want Congress to repeal the law, 28 percent want lawmakers to wait to repeal until the details of the replacement plan have been announced and 20 percent want lawmakers to repeal the law immediately and work out the details of a replacement later.

“After hearing pro-repeal arguments about the law’s costs to individuals and the government, the share of the public supporting repeal grows as large as 60 percent, while anti-repeal arguments about people losing coverage and the impact on people with pre-existing conditions decreases support for repeal to as low as 27 percent,” the poll states.

Health care ranks as a top issue for Trump to address, behind jobs, the economy, and immigration. Regarding health care specifically, the poll asked Americans what they thought was a top priority.

Americans cited priorities including lowering the amount of money individuals pay for health care (67 percent), lowering the cost of prescription drugs (61 percent), dealing with the prescription painkiller addiction epidemic (45 percent), repealing Obamacare (37 percent), decreasing how much the federal government spends on health care over time (35 percent), and decreasing the role of the government in health care (35 percent).

The poll finds that 63 percent of Republicans say repealing Obamacare is a top priority in addition to 32 percent of Independents and 21 percent of Democrats.

“When asked how confident they are in President-elect Trump’s ability to deliver on this campaign promise that Americans will get better health care at a lower cost than they pay now, Americans are split with similar shares saying they are either ‘not too confident’ or ‘not at all confident’ (51 percent) as saying they are ‘very confident’ or ‘somewhat confident’ (47 percent),” the poll states.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment by press time.